At the Taj Palace, a plate of lobsters could cost Rs 2,200 or more, but there are plenty of cheaper options available in the Delhi these days.

Sitting at his small office at Champakkara near Kochi, MJ Martin peered into a picture that has just landed on his smartphone.

The red snapper that Venkitesh clicked at the Vizag fishing harbor and sent via WhatsApp looked fresh. As long-time business associates, the wholesale fish traders don't haggle much over price.

The deal was struck over the phone with the usual terms: that the catch would reach Kochi within 24 hours by rail or road, and the money would be sent through bank once the consignment arrived.

The fish, caught off the eastern coast and then landed in the southern city, will take another journey of hundreds or thousands of kilometres through the great Indian plains before reaching the dinner tables in northern cities like Delhi or Ludhiana. It is quite likely that the grilled fish served at Delhi's Taj Palace is supplied by Martin, and caught off Kochi, Mumbai or Tuticorin.

"We get prawns and lobsters from suppliers in Kochi and other fishes from different parts of the country," said chef Ravi Bhatia of Taj Palace in Delhi's diplomatic enclave of Chanakyapuri.

At the Taj Palace in the diplomatic enclave of Chanakyapuri, a plate of lobsters could cost Rs 2,200 or more, but there are plenty of cheaper options available in the capital these days.

Marine products were a luxury in northern landlocked cities like Delhi. Not so now, with modern packaging, transportation and storage facilities allowing supply of the highly perishable commodity in places that are far away from coastal areas.

Seafood is increasingly finding a place on the menus in Delhi for instance as the supply chain extends its reach to meet demand for this rich source of proteins and omega-3 fats, driven by vicissitudes of consumption.

"Punjabis love seer fish while Bengali go for their hilsa. Demand for the mackerel is also high owing to a large Malayali population," said Musharraf Ali, owner of Janta Fresh Fish company in Gazipur.

While it isn't difficult to find a fish market in most neighborhoods and most modern retail stores sell seafood these days, technology has given more choices to the consumer.

NEW BUSINESS MODELS

When Subha Kapoor decided to follow her father into fish business, she decided to do it differently.

She launched an ecommerce site. Kapoor taught engineering at Chennai's Prince Venkateswara Padmavathy College of Engineering before she quit the job in 2011 to take care of her child.

A few months later, she decided to do something on her own. With some help from her softwaredeveloper husband, she launched Chennai Seafood in October 2012 to home deliver fresh fish.

Her father, Bhaskaran, owns five fishing boats. But Kapoor, who has an engineering degree and an MBA, often has to depend on agents in the Chennai harbor to meet demand.

Chennai Seafood procures fish based on orders received the previous day, ice packs it immediately and shifts to the company's processing facility where it is cleaned, sliced and washed.

Delivery process starts as early as 7 am and is completed by 11 am. Orders have to be placed via phone or Internet before 8 pm to get delivery the next day. Kapoor is unable to supply to big hotels because she cannot afford to give them the 45-day credit they ask for.

"But once we start growing, we will definitely start supplying to hotels," she says. Chennai Seafood has plans also to supply fish in Bangalore. The business is good and Kapoor expects the company to break even within the next three months.

Online fish retailing is gaining popularity fast, and Kapoor says the trend is similar to the larger retail market where ecommerce is witnessing exponential growth at the cost of brick-and-mortar players.

To be sure, online fish sales don't form even a tittle of the current domestic annual demand estimated in a 2012 Assocham study at 7.5 million tonnes - for marine and fresh water fish together, both in fresh and processed form.

But online demand is catching up, especially in cities like Bangalore and Pune which house a number of technology companies and millions of tech-savvy youth who are the drivers of the online retail revolution in India.

In fact, some of the online fish sellers aren't able to cope with demand. Seatohome.com, one of India's first online fish-trading sites, suspended operations temporarily in January.

Promoter Mathew Joseph says it couldn't handle demand which was more than what they had envisaged.

"Our facilities permitted only a limited scale of operations." The Kochi-based company supplied fresh-water and marine products to homes as far away as Delhi, sending them by scheduled airlines, packed in ice-filled thermocol cartons.

It assured customers of fish that were caught the same day or a day before by men who venture into the sea in small boats and return the same day, unlike mechanised vessels that stay in the sea for a week or more.

Joseph expects to re-launch operations in a larger scale by August-September. Sumanta Gupta's FishVish also sells fish online, but supplies are currently limited to Pune where it is based.

The 48-year-old former army man, who launched the venture along with partner Bijal Patel after selling their software business, supplies frozen seafood to homes, big restaurants and hotels.

It plans to extend the service to Mumbai and Goa by August. FishVish uses IQF, or individually quick frozen, method to keep seafood fresh. This technology makes life easier for the consumer, because it keeps, for instance, every shrimp in a packet separate, not as a solid block which is usually the case with frozen food.

DEMAND AND SUPPLY

According to the Assocham study, the country's marine waters are home to more than 1,700 fish species including 200 commercially significant species. The fishing sector employs about 15 million and fish eaters account for over half the country's total population, it says.

While the country earns valuable foreign exchange through seafood exports, most of the fish caught here are consumed locally, and more than two-thirds of that in fresh form because of low demand for valueadded products.

There are concerns as well. Latest studies show a fall in marine catch.

According to a Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute report, the quantity of fish caught off the Indian coast in 2013 fell 4% from a year earlier to 3.78 million tonnes.

And, since the December 2004 tsunami, some of the fish varieties have disappeared or have migrated from one place to another, say traders in Champakkara, the Kerala fish trading market that has an annual turnover of Rs 100 crore.

For example, the oil sardine that was caught in plenty off Kerala is now available more in Gujarat and West Bengal. The catch in the western coast is declining over the years.

But demand is growing - industry officials expect total demand to cross 10 million tonnes in the next two years - and there are people who work hard to ensure supplies and keep the palates happy.

Kolkata's Calfish brings basa from Vietnam and hilsa from Myanmar. "I go around the world to procure different kinds of fish," partner Amit Kumar Chakraborty said.

Martin, the fish trader of Kochi, gets fish from Gujarat, Goa and Mangalore in the western coast and Vizag and Orissa in the east, and works in tandem with wholesalers elsewhere to keep the supply chain smooth. "When we experience shortage of some varieties we bring it from other markets," he said. "We turn suppliers when other markets face a similar shortage."